A random letter for Scattergories that nobody can argue with

Try this: in your head, "randomly" pick a letter of the alphabet right now. There's a very good chance it was a consonant near the front — S, T, R, M — because that's where human "randomness" always drifts. We almost never blurt out X or Q, and that's exactly the problem when someone at the table is meant to pull a fair letter for Scattergories. Whoever calls it gets quietly accused of picking an easy one, and the round starts with a grumble instead of a timer. A letter picker takes the choosing — and the suspicion — out of human hands entirely.

One button, one genuinely random letter

The random letter picker does exactly one thing and does it cleanly: press the button, get a big letter on the screen. No list to type, no setup — it's built for the moment a word game needs a starting letter now. The draw uses the browser's proper random source rather than the lopsided guesswork of a person on the spot, so over a night of rounds the letters actually spread across the alphabet the way they're supposed to, instead of clustering on everyone's favourite consonants.

Because it's a screen everyone can see, it also settles the fairness question for free. Nobody "chose" Z to be mean and nobody softballed an S — the machine did it in front of the whole room. That neutrality is half the value: the argument about whether the letter was fair just stops happening.

Easy mode skips the letters nobody can play

Here's the thing about a truly uniform A-to-Z draw: some letters make for a miserable round. Try naming a country, a kitchen item, and a film that all start with X before the timer runs out. So the picker leaves Easy mode on by default, and easy mode simply excludes the four worst offenders — Q, V, X, and Z. You still get a random letter, just never one of the four that turn a fun round into a frustrated blank page. It's the same convention the physical Scattergories die uses, and it keeps the game moving.

If you're playing with a sharper crowd that wants the brutal letters, turn easy mode off and the full 26 are back in play, X and Q and all. The default is the gentle game; the toggle is there for when you want to make people suffer a little.

No repeats, so every round is a new letter

Over a long session, plain randomness will occasionally hand you the same letter twice in a row, which feels like a waste of a round. Flip on No repeats this session and the picker remembers what it's already drawn and works through the alphabet without repeating, only resetting once it's used them all. That turns it into a tidy way to run a whole game of distinct rounds — eight letters, eight different starting points — instead of leaving it to chance whether you get a fresh one. It respects easy mode too, so a no-repeat run still skips Q, V, X, and Z if you've left them out.

It's not just for Scattergories

A random letter is the engine behind a whole shelf of word games. Categories, the pen-and-paper cousin where everyone races to fill a grid, runs on the same draw. Boggle-style warm-ups, "name something in this room starting with…", alphabet challenges on a car journey, a quick vocabulary drill in a language class — anywhere a starting letter needs to be fair and instant, the picker fits. Teachers in particular get a referee they can't be accused of biasing: the letter came from the screen, not from the front of the room.

It travels just as well to a quiet evening at home. "Name an animal for every letter" keeps a car full of kids busy without a single printed worksheet, and pairing the picker with a one-minute timer turns any category — fruits, capital cities, footballers — into an instant round you can run on a phone. Because there's nothing to set up and nothing to download, the game exists the moment someone says "I'm bored," which is exactly when you need it to. Keep easy mode on for the younger players so the round never dies on an impossible letter, and the whole table stays in it.

When you want a different kind of randomizer

A letter picker is for letter-based games. If the round needs a category or a word prompt rather than a letter, a charades word generator hands out things to act instead. For a full-table party game where you call random items aloud, a bingo caller runs the same no-repeat draw over numbers. And to settle "who goes first" before the letter is even drawn, a would you rather randomizer is a quick way to break the ice while everyone gets a pen.

Let the screen call the letter

The next time a word game stalls on "okay, who picks the letter," don't. Leave easy mode on for a friendly round or switch it off for a cruel one, turn on no-repeats if you're playing a full set, and let the letter picker call it where everyone can see. Fair, fast, and one fewer thing to argue about before the timer even starts.